CHICKENPIE.South Korea had 68% of the ball on Wednesday night at Estadio BBVA, in Guadalupe, on the edge of Monterrey. They had six corners, two more shots on target than South Africa, and the captain — Son Heung-Min, the Tottenham man, the most-capped player in this Korea Republic squad, the face of Asian football for a decade — ran out for the second half and then ran out again, straight down the tunnel. He was substituted at halftime. The manager, Jong Mun Son, did not bring him back. The team that had the ball for two thirds of the match lost 1-0. Son Heung-Min is going home. South Africa is not.
The goal came in the 63rd minute, on a fast break that started inside South Africa's own half. Tshepang Moremi — on as a substitute just a minute earlier — sprinted into the right channel and dragged the ball across the face of the box. Thapelo Maseko arrived at the near post, the kind of late run that good forwards time to half a step before the defender thinks to look. He opened his body to the ball and hit it first-time with his left foot. The shot was low, into the bottom-right corner. Kim Seung-Gyu, Korea's goalkeeper, was already on the way down the wrong way. The ball went past him, into the net. South Africa — the team with 31% of the possession, the team everyone had written off, the team Hugo Broos had been building out of the unflashy Mamelodi Sundowns and Orlando Pirates core for four years — were ahead.
South Korea had fifteen minutes to find an equalizer and they threw everything they had at it. Hwang Hee-Chan hit one over from outside the box in the 67th. Lee Kang-In — the Paris Saint-Germain man, the most technically gifted Korean player on the pitch — curled one wide from inside the area in the 73rd. Son Heung-Min watched most of it from the technical area, his face unreadable. Kim Min-Jae, the Bayern Munich centre-back, pushed forward for set pieces. Nothing went in. The South African goalkeeper, Ronwen Williams, had only two saves to make all night, because the shots that did get through mostly missed the target. The referee added seven minutes of stoppage time at the end of the second half, which felt like seven hours. None of it mattered. The score held. The final whistle blew. South Africa had won.
They had the ball. We had the moment. Sometimes that is how the World Cup works. — Hugo Broos, South Africa head coach
For Bafana Bafana — the name means The Boys, in Zulu — it is their first World Cup knockout-stage qualification since 2002, twenty-four years. They were the host country that year, the same way the United States, Canada and Mexico are the host countries this year. They went out in the group stage then, too, but not before beating Slovenia 1-0 and drawing 2-2 with Denmark. Since then, South Africa had failed to qualify for four consecutive World Cups. They missed Germany 2006, South Africa 2010 (the one they hosted), Brazil 2014, Russia 2018, and Qatar 2022. Hugo Broos, the 73-year-old Belgian who took over in 2021, rebuilt the team out of the South African league and a handful of European-based players, mostly in the lower divisions of the Eredivisie and Ligue 1. They came to this tournament as 500-1 outsiders in most books. They are not outsiders anymore.
For Korea Republic, it ends a streak of four consecutive World Cups where they had reached the knockout stage. They were in the round of 16 in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 — getting out of the group every time. They beat Germany 2-0 in 2018 in Russia, in one of the great World Cup upsets. They lost to Brazil 4-1 in the round of 16 that year. They went out to Uruguay 2-1 in 2022. Son Heung-Min was the captain for all of those tournaments except the first. Wednesday night at Estadio BBVA was the first time in sixteen years that a Korea Republic squad led by Son Heung-Min failed to advance from the group stage. The captain walked off the pitch at halftime and into the changing room, and the team's tournament was over before the second half began.
The next match for both teams is a knockout-round game for South Africa — the round of 32, the new format that started this year — and a flight home for Korea Republic. South Africa will play the runner-up from Group D on Tuesday. Son Heung-Min will be back in London by the weekend, joining the rest of the Tottenham squad for pre-season training. The World Cup moves on without him. Thapelo Maseko will move on with it. The kid who came on as a substitute, sprinted into the right channel, and hit a half-volley into the bottom corner — that is the story of the tournament, on the night that mattered most.
Daily Art Caricature by Chickenpie — World Cup 2026.
